We Start with Tie Dye - Day 1

After talking about dying fabric for several years, we took inventory and found we had all the materials we needed. A mild summer encouraged us further so we went T-shirt hunting and got everything. So, here we are, recording our experiences and experiments. We hope our journey helps you on your own!

Today we got serious and mixed our first batch of COLORS!
We started with
Fiber Reactive "Proclon MX type' dyes we purchased from Dharma
http://www.dharmatrading.com/
Golden Yellow
Rose Red
Burgundy
Turquoise
Chocolate Brown
Cayman Island Green
Alpine Blue
We mixed  2 tablespoons of dye to a cup of water, but found out later that was too strong.  It was suggested we cut back to 1T dye or less (2 teaspoons) per cup of water, which we did and found it worked just as well.

We tried to concoct a lime mixing 1-1/2 T Golden Yellow to 1 tsp. Alpine Blue to 1 cup water. It came out apple green.
We soaked our cottons in a  solution of 1 cup Soda Ash  mixed with one gallon of warm water and let it sit for about 2 hours. This is what Dharma calls the Soda-Soak Tie-Dye Method. (Use precautions when using soda ash (gloves, protective eye wear)).
Using gloves we wrung them out and hung them on the clothesline to dry. They can also be dyed wet.
We did not dump the soda ash solution (it's not eco-friendly) but continued to use it until it was gone. The mixed dyes were put in squeeze bottles. The narrow tip bottles work best.

Robb dyed 3 shirts today.

One tight spiral,

a horizontal fan fold

and a vertical fan fold that we found directions for on Jeremy's Tie-Dye page.http://tiedyeguide.com/tiedye/HowToTie-dye.html (See pictures).

After dying, the shirts sat in plastic bags for 4 hours in the warm California sun. We rinsed them with a hose and bucket 4 or 5 times, hung them on the clothesline until dry. Then we washed them with warm water in washing machine and Synthropol and a Shout color-catcher sheet and tossed them in the dryer. They remain color-fast (he's worn them already).

I experimented with cotton bandannas (Dharma sells them by the dozen 22"x22" already hemmed). Also made a sampler. The color proportions are recorded.